Mortgage Exit Fees successes and failures

cheveleyaprkpaul

I recently remortgaged from Bristol & West to ING direct, and was charged £195 fee. My original contract specified a £100 fee. I filled in the template letter and posted it off and they have agreed to refund £95. Good result for 15 minutes work. :T

Cheque received this week for 95 pounds.

silverman_3

Hi. I closed my mortgage with Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society & was charged £225 Admin Charge. After hearing Martin on BBC Radio 2 I contacted C&G & requested a refund. I was told that I was due £175. I was lucky that I still had my original contract when I took out the mortgage in 1988, it said nothing about an Admin Charge. I got back on to C&G to tell them that I should have the whole amount refunded as my original contract made no mention of this charge. They agreed that I was right & I was refunded the full amount plus interest of £1.95. The moral is don't settle for what they first offer, do your homework.

Top Marks Martin :T

pdpped

Nice one Martin. I wrote to A&L two weeks ago and today got my £100 back. Your letter did the trick. Yippy!

Flangela

Hi, this is my first ever post to a forum!
Just wanted to say a huge thanks to all on this website for the mortgage exit fees info. Just received £50 back from Standard Life...somehow, I don't think they would have owned up to it without us sending the template letter from this site.
Cheers!

4$£&*(£$&*(!

Halifax have made me laugh and laugh with the whole MEAF affair.

I took out a mortgage with them in 2002 and left them in 2005, being charged £150 administration and £50 deeds release in my fees. After writing to them, I believed the best I would get would be the 2002 fees charged (although I argued none of these fees had been mentioned in the paperwork I had); they offered me £175 - although the offer letter stated £75 on the cover sheet, and the acceptance form attached stated £175.

So I sent them a fax last week to state I wanted to clarify - was the offer £75 or £175, and also I wanted £200 as the full exit fees added up to this amount.

Not having heard from them, I phoned today, to be told that my cheque had been posted! They looked into it, and apologised saying I shouldn't have received the cheque since I didn't sign any paperwork accepting it as my full and final offer. They also said the deeds transfer - £50 - was not part of the MEAF (which I debated since I had to pay it in order to leave them). They said it was £150 they should have refunded; but they mistakenly put £175 on the letter!

I'm waiting for someone to get back to me, but I think what my final demand will be is they send me a cheque for £25 as a goodwill gesture for messing me about, I keep the existing cheque for £175 as well, that gives me all my fees (including deeds transfer) back. In return I'll sign the acceptance form for £175, saving them a lot of embarrassment when the books are audited!

What do others think to this?

Felix2

Llyds TSB

Hello there

Hope you can help. I was interested to hear that there was a FSA announcment about exit charges when closing your mortgage. I printed off the template from moneysavingexpert.com and sent this off. In the letter I stated I no longer had the account details and requested what the fee increase was. 10 days later I got a reply that they could not find my mortgage account and request I call their Customer Service Team. I called the centre and was informed as I had remortgaged to Direct Line in 1996, they did not hold records for longer than 10 years. Is this correct and if so is there any way of establishing what my mortage account number was? If anyone can shed some light on this that would be fantastic.

Regards

Felix2

geordiescouse

Abbey

Received my cheque today for £160! Thank you Martin!

livin'_next_the_cut

Never thought about reclaiming a MEAF but your article set me thinking and I found a great bit of news for anybody that's had a mortgage with Halifax for more than 10 years before repaying [or if the mortgage has run full term].

It could be a case of HAVING CAKE AND EATING TOO!

Whilst searching through papers for details, I came across a leaflet issued with an old mortgage statement; it's headed "Let's walk through your mortgage statement" and has a print reference of 1/399946-9C [01/00] - I guess this means it was issued in January 2000. Anyway, the important bit says - "Mortgage discharge fee [waived if the mortgage account has been open for ten years or more or if the mortgage has run its full term if less than ten years]" £50.

I was charged £115 in January 2005, so my letter will be in the post to HBOS within hours!

Thanks Martin and the MSE team

waverley610

Bradford & Bingley will give me back £25 (which was the actual difference) as a sign of good will.

classrunner

For anyone who is interested, I hold an original copy of charges levied by Yorkshire Building Society from 1997. The charge for redemption on that date was 20 pounds for legal fees. Hope this helps someone.